A common problem when bathing is holding a bar of soap in one's hand because the whole bar is slippery and often a rounded oblong shape. The problem is aggravated when the holder is rubbing the bar on body surfaces to apply soap because the hand cannot encircle the bar while leaving one whole face of the bar open to rub on the body. The user must trap the bar between a cupped hand and the body surface, plus follow the contours of the body as the bar is pushed around. This a tricky, acquired skill that requires a fair degree of dexterity plus a large enough, but not too large, hand; and/or a small enough, but not too small, bar of soap. Finger length, palm size, bar length/width dimensions as well as aspect ratio, and especially thickness of the bar all come into play. We are all familiar with the problem of using the soap after it gets to be less than about a half inch thick. It is so difficult to deal with that it often is simply thrown away, which is wasteful. Finally, extra consideration needs to be given to the fact that manual dexterity may decrease as one gets older.
A prior art way to deal with this problem is the “soap on a rope” concept, where a long loop of soft thick rope extends out of the longitudinal end of a roughly cylindrical bar of soap. The rope can be used to hang the soap on the shower or bath wall or put over one's head to keep it accessible in front of the user. This makes it easier to grab the soap and to apply soap to a washcloth or one's hand, but is awkward at best to rub the soap on one's body. Also, when the soap gets thin, it typically breaks apart and falls in pieces off of the rope, again causing waste as the remains are thrown away.
A conventional bar of soap becomes slippery when wet and is frequently dropped onto the shower stall floor or let loose in the bath water. During a shower the slippery bar of soap is especially a nuisance since a person must bend over in the shower stall to retrieve it, thereby getting their hair wet when it may be undesirable to do so. Having to bend over to retrieve the bar of soap may also be inconvenient to users who suffer from a bad back, who are arthritic or who may have a handicap that makes bending over difficult. In the shower, adults, as well as senior citizens, tend to lose their balance when bending over to pick up the bar of soap off the floor of the stall.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,390,971 (1995 Feb. 21; Warren) discloses a holder is provided for a bar of soap, which consists of a structure for affixing firmly into a surrounding mass on an outer surface of the bar of soap. A component is for holding a hand of a person. An element is for attaching the holding component to the affixing structure, so that the hand of the person can conveniently hold onto the bar of soap when it becomes wet and slippery.